Part 2 of Lou Pearlman: From Blimps to Boy Bands – The Controversial Legacy Behind NSYNC and Backstreet Boys

Lou Pearlman's story is one of deception and downfall, and today we're unpacking the full extent of his scandalous business ventures. Uncover how this former mogul fabricated entire companies, including the infamous Transcontinental Airlines, to dupe investors. Through interviews and firsthand accounts, we peel back the layers of Pearlman's intricate web of lies, revealing his audacious tactics and the dramatic consequences that ensued. You'll be shocked to learn how far he went to maintain his facade, forging documents and creating fictitious entities, all while profiting from his deceit.

But it wasn't just Pearlman's fake businesses that built his empire; we also explore the early days of his famous boy bands, their rise to stardom, and the grueling tours that cemented their success. Relive the frenzy of the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC's early European tours, and understand the rigorous mall and theme park tours that made them household names in the U.S. We dive into Pearlman's ill-fated ventures beyond music, including his disastrous filmmaking attempt with "Longshot" and his questionable talent scouting business, which left thousands of clients disgruntled and out of pocket.

Finally, we reflect on the broader implications of Pearlman's fraudulent activities, from the psychological manipulation of investors to the devastating financial fallout. Hear about the complex financial maneuvers and fabricated firms that supported his schemes, leading to his dramatic arrest and eventual sentencing. We also take a nostalgic detour, reminiscing about vintage business card machines at the mall, and wrap up with an exciting announcement about our upcoming vintage cinema review. Don't miss this riveting episode that promises to uncover the full scope of Pearlman's deceitful legacy and its lasting impact.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Thanks for tuning in to the old dirty basement On this week's episode. We're covering part two of Lou Pearlman.

Speaker 2: 0:07

Ah, now this week we find out what happens when you make fake companies and the people start asking to cash in on them.

Speaker 1: 0:15

Uh oh.

Speaker 3: 0:15

Yeah, I never knew you could make money on something that completely doesn't exist at all.

Speaker 1: 0:20

Yeah, this guy did it, so we hope you're enjoying the podcast. Speaking of which, if you are that five-star rating on spotify on apple, you can leave a written review and sit back, relax and enjoy part two of lou perlman this is the old, dirty basement home to debauchery, madness, murder and mayhem.

Speaker 4: 0:47

A terror-filled train ride deep into the depths of the devil's den.

Speaker 1: 0:53

With a little bit of humor history and copious consciousness.

Speaker 4: 0:58

I'm your announcer, shallow Throat. Your hosts are Dave, matt and Zap. I love you, matthew McConaughey All right, all right, all right.

Speaker 3: 1:12

Hey, this is Dave, Matt and Zap, and welcome to the old dirty basement where every week, we cover a true crime murder or compelling story? Sit back, relax and comprehend. Hello, is it old, dirty basement you're looking for?

Speaker 2: 1:33

how's it going guys? What's going on?

Speaker 3: 1:35

that was a lino richie reference. Yes, it was like what you did there, thank you.

Speaker 2: 1:39

Thank you, yeah, it just came to me I want to take this opportunity to thank mrs dave for allowing us back in the basement.

Speaker 1: 1:45

She kind of kicked us out last time yeah, I know, but maybe that was for the better, because this is such a long story it was.

Speaker 3: 1:50

Maybe you know we're like refreshed, ready to jump back on into the old uh perlman stuff here speaking of refreshed.

Speaker 2: 1:57

So for the listeners who don't know, we record this in dave's basement of the. There is no old, dirty basement without dave's basement right and dave is always so thoughtful to prepare coffee for the three of us here, you know. So we're talking a lot, we're doing whatever we got to keep wetting our whistle. Now, while I thank dave so much for his coffee, I mean, look, this coffee today is thick. I mean it's thick is it strong?

Speaker 2: 2:24

this is some serious coffee. Man, like I'm used to the light or the medium, this is some stiff coffee I just did the normal two scoops no, it's one one scoop per cup wow, this was yeah, this, this is um. I thought it was a two scooper it might maybe some of the water kind of evaporated out.

Speaker 3: 2:41

I don't know, but it is strong, yeah, I can feel my plaque clearing out of my uh whenever my uh yeah, my guts, yeah, there's a strong coating in in my, in my esophagus of all.

Speaker 2: 2:56

Right. So back to lou pearlman. So I know we spent a lot of the last episode at least a good part of it talked about the boy bands that you know he had started, and that's. You know that that's with with purpose. I mean, this is these, are these boy bands that are known globally? Everybody knows these boy bands, so it makes sense to talk about them a bit, especially when it comes to lou pearlman, without whom those boy bands wouldn't have existed well, yeah, you had to give a whole background to the story.

Speaker 3: 3:22

You just can't jump into it not knowing what the man has done. That's right. And I mean now we're going to find out more of the story with Lou Pearlman.

Speaker 1: 3:28

And it got me to thinking like we didn't bring it up on the last one, but they went over to Europe first both bands to tour before they really kind of hit in the? U. You can make it here yep, it was. Yeah, it was like their, their experiment right to do it over there, but you're big in germany like hasselhoff that's true.

Speaker 2: 3:50

That's the first thing that came to mind for me, now that that notwithstanding, both of those groups did in fact not unlike tiffany, debbie gibson, whatever they did the mall tours the mall tours the, the restaurant tours, the the sea world they were putting it in for sure.

Speaker 3: 4:06

Who was the big one at our local mall was that? Was that? Uh, tiffany, not tiffany. Tiffany came to the harrisburg east mall. Yes, she's the redhead, for damn sure I didn't know, for damn sure so a quick recap uh on lou perlman.

Speaker 2: 4:17

Again we are in part two of this story. Uh grew up relatively decent upbringing. Um had a good buddy of his uh, alan gross garfunkel was his uncle.

Speaker 2: 4:29

Oh, that's right, uncle funkel, the only other uncle the only other kid in his apartment building was this guy named alan gross whose window faced an airport. Uh, lou perlman just grew up, you know whatever fascinated, or, as he says, fascinated with? Uh, the blimping business, blimps, airplanes, you name it. Went to college, came out of college, started a helicopter company, started a blimping business. In fact his first blimp was for Jordache. That crashed and burned. He got a good settlement from that. Then he continued on into the blimping business even bigger and better, picked up McDonald's, picked up a couple other big clients, started a private charter airplane charter business. Everything's going well. He gets a partner, a guy named Venture, julian.

Speaker 2: 5:16

Venture, who got into the airship business with Lou Julian brought a good amount of money, but they needed more money to satisfy Julian's desires for growth. So they took the company public, hard selling the stock by virtue of a brokerage outfit named Chatfield Dean and Company. That's where we were talking about the boiler room effect, where these guys were pushing the stock so hard that not only were they basically forcing their customers, they wouldn't say no or they wouldn't accept no as an answer, but if customers were asking to buy some other stock, they would just take that money and buy airship anyway From there. Oh, that's when we went on to the big, the big boy band discussion. That's when. So, after all of this, thanks to his chartered flight service, new kids on the block was one of Lou's customers.

Speaker 2: 6:05

Lou hears that new kids on the block was one of lou's customers. Lou hears that new kids on the block is grossing the brand. New kids on the block is grossing a billion in 1990. He wants to jump on that train. Come on, ride that train. He uh decides I'm going to get into the boy band business. So he starts up, the backstreet boys starts up in and everything's just going swimmingly. Everything's going wonderfully until 1998 when Brian Luttrell of the Backstreet Boys filed a lawsuit complaining that they weren't making enough money. Like, where's the money, lebowski? What happened here? We made well over $10 million and you kept $10 million. Of that. The other five of us only got $300 grand and every other Backstreet Boy joined into that lawsuit except nick carter and is that where we continue our story 1998, in fact?

Speaker 1: 6:53

I think we should, I think we should.

Speaker 2: 6:55

It's a good year oh, great year, not like a blimp, no, not who. I like that, like that. Well done, all right. Well, it's 1998. Julian bencher, that trust fund baby investor who'd gone into business with Lou in Airship International, was looking to liquidate his holdings in Transcontinental Airlines. Just a reminder Transcontinental Airlines was the business that Lou said that he had started with. This is when Lou went over to Germany Wollongong, that's right to Germany, wollongong, that's right, theodore Wollonkemper. So he learned all there was to know about the blimping business from Theodore Wollonkemper and then he and Theodore went into business together.

Speaker 2: 7:36

By now Lou is selling all of these other people like TransCon and NL Airlines or TransCon, let's just call it. It's funny that it's Trans and Con airlines or transcon, let's just call it. Uh, it's funny that it's trans and con that comes in. That he gets. He folded all of these businesses by now again, this was in part one. He folded all of his businesses underneath the umbrella of transcontinental airlines. So that's just like the holding company. But he's again, has continued to push and push people to buy into these companies, buy in, buy in, buy in. I mean, look, boy band success. I'm going to take this public too like it's.

Speaker 3: 8:06

It's going to be great, huge, tremendous, was it at his own band. Lou perlman in the holding company could be, it could have been nice, nice man.

Speaker 1: 8:13

I'm surprised that with that name, transcontinental airlines like continental is already an established, I would assume at that time an established airline airlines that you would be allowed to use that you had to throw the trans in it though. But I'm saying you could say like trans, whatever trans american airline american airlines.

Speaker 3: 8:30

Is it an airline or is it not?

Speaker 1: 8:31

I would just think it's yeah, is it or is it not? Yeah, I would just think it would be kind of like, uh, for america, let's say for a continental airline say hey, this is confusing, like people might think that's us, and that's a very good observation you have there, dave.

Speaker 2: 8:45

So what you're saying is hmm, if I hear the term transcontinental airlines, that in my mind might sound a lot like just regular continental airlines or trans world airlines. Twa, it must be a good investment, sure thing. Lou I'll buy in sounds good aren't they both defunct right now?

Speaker 3: 9:03

is there twa anymore?

Speaker 2: 9:04

no, no, or I don't know continental is no more either oh, I with that.

Speaker 2: 9:09

Transcontinental airlines. Let's not forget that uh, when you buy transcontinental airline stock you were getting a guaranteed dividend to 10 percent. Uh, or, I'm sorry, that was airship international. Uh, transcon wasn't uh public yet. But you could also buy into the uh transinental Airlines' employee investment savings account, that EISA program that was paying out at 8%, and you know it was according to Lou here. It was guaranteed by FDIC, it was insured by AIG and Lloyds of London. So, look, this is a you got nothing to lose here. You got nothing, but upside it was down with OPP. He was.

Speaker 1: 9:46

It was all that. But I'm surprised, like I said, I guess that makes sense. If you can get a name that seems familiar to people, that makes sense. But I'm surprised, like those other companies which maybe they're not even paying attention, that it's the hey, wait a minute. You're causing confusion. It'd be like if, well, mcdonald's and McDowell's or whatever you know what.

Speaker 3: 10:05

I'm saying Think of Slurpee Big Mac. We got the.

Speaker 2: 10:08

Big Mac how about. Slurpee and Slushy yes.

Speaker 1: 10:11

Very similar.

Speaker 2: 10:12

There you go, just a little subtle change, but it's enough. It's enough. It's enough to avoid any kind of copyright infringement. Right? Well, all right.

Speaker 2: 10:22

So Julian Bencher is looking to. He's going into that business with Lou in Airship International. He wants to liquidate his holdings in Transcontinental Airlines. Pearlman ended up dodging him for months before finally relenting and telling him that it was that Theodore Wollenkemper, lou's partner, who taught him all there is to know about the blimping business and majority shareholder of Trans transcontinental airlines, he was the one who was holding up the sale.

Speaker 2: 10:48

Okay, bencher took matter into his own hands and went to visit woolenkemper. Upon confronting him, bencher received a hearty laugh from woolen kemper and an assurance that not only did woolen ke Kemper not own any sort of transcontinental airlines, he'd never even heard of it. Moreover, according to Willem Kemper, the only sort of business Pearl did with Willem Kemper anymore was merely to borrow his planes if Pearlmans weren't in the shop. At the peak of its success, transcontinental airlines reported owning 60 aircraft, including 14 727s, and had annual net income in excess of $100 million. In reality, transcontinental Airlines didn't exist. It never existed. Wait what? It was all a lie, a complete and total fabrication that existed only on paper.

Speaker 3: 11:46

So the 60 aircraft, the 727s, they're just sitting there in somebody's imagination, correct?

Speaker 2: 11:52

All it was was made up. It was on paper. That is awesome. Now, livid, livid Bencher immediately returned to confront Lou. Now, in exchange for an undisclosed sum, bencher kept his silence. Again, this is 1998.

Speaker 3: 12:10

So how much do you think that silent sum was I?

Speaker 2: 12:13

don't know. But it was enough. Look, lou is scared. Basically, this guy, bencher, came up and said look, I want to liquidate my holdings in this Transcontinental Airlines. I want to take that money, I want to go do something else. He was like he's not getting a hold of the guy, he's not getting back to him. And then he tells him that his partner, this Wollenkämper, is holding up the work. Well, it's Wollenkämper's fault. So Pencher just goes to Wollenkämper and says what's your problem? There's no idea. What airline? What are you talking about?

Speaker 2: 12:39

Yeah, so this whole thing again from part one. He had gotten so many people to invest in this company throwing money at not just the company, this ESA program, all of this stuff didn't exist.

Speaker 3: 12:52

But when you look at these guys, we go through a lot of this in the things we discuss. When you're having scams this way, when you throw in interesting conversation, when you promise things, people are willing to give you money. If something sounds good, man wait. Usually it's too good, just you wait now.

Speaker 1: 13:09

Wouldn't this guy be liable, though, if he knew something was going on?

Speaker 2: 13:12

like if you're not at all liable for what it's not a publicly traded company yeah it's private sure, I know this, but I'm not obligated to do anything right, but isn't it's illegal activity or no?

Speaker 1: 13:24

I don't know it's it's so.

Speaker 2: 13:25

At the same time, you would think it might be something like, I don't know, accessory. No, he's not pushing the stock, he's not pushing the product, he's not doing anything. He's this. This venture guy is, yeah, venture julian venture. He's too busy in the blimping business. Hell, he wanted to liquidate his holdings in transcon to buy, more to buy more blimps or do something like that.

Speaker 2: 13:45

Well, lou's success in the boy band business made him into a magnate in the music world. He went on to manage other boy bands, such as otown, which was fun fact, the result of the abc and mtv reality television series making the band, as well as lfo, natural take five and marshall dylan. That's while it sounds like somebody's name, that's actually a group you guys remember uh lfo yeah and they had the new kids on the block had a bunch of hits.

Speaker 1: 14:14

Chinese food makes me sick.

Speaker 2: 14:17

Abercrombie and fitch yeah you got one on me there, man. I definitely don't know that. Maybe I remember. Remember the Abercrombie and Fitch. Yeah, that's Abercrombie and Fitch, it was like all over MTV in that one year. Of course it was. Why wouldn't it be Exactly? Well, lou also went on to manage the girl groups Solid Harmony and Innocence. Don't know that?

Speaker 1: 14:35

No, no Right. Oh fun fact though in the beginning.

Speaker 2: 14:40

Yep, and she left and went on to do her own solo thing Right Now.

Speaker 3: 14:44

She's just crazy, mm-hmm.

Speaker 2: 14:48

Well, oh, fun fact. Oops, I did it again.

Speaker 1: 14:51

What? Oh, I thought you were saying something that's a Max Martin song.

Speaker 2: 14:54

Oh, he wrote that one Shit yeah, oh shit, dude, most of her hits. Yeah, I wrote that too.

Speaker 1: 15:06

yeah, hell yeah, max martin is everybody remembers is the wow, I mean just the, the, the pinnacle of pop writing success.

Speaker 2: 15:10

Yeah, I think he's in ghost. Might be from sweden, could be, could be, yeah, he's one of the ghouls, the ghouls that's ghost the band, not ghost the movie no, no uh, let's see. Oh, in addition to those, uh, two girl groups, uh, he also man loop had also managed um individuals such as aaron carter, who was nick carter's little brother, jordan knight, and a dude named c-note oh, uh, yeah, he's a hundred dollar bill y'all.

Speaker 1: 15:33

No, no, c-note. Didn't he do that song um?

Speaker 3: 15:35

I never heard of him, never heard of him c-note green, that's c-low, c-low, green, c-note green.

Speaker 2: 15:43

Ha-ha Wait what did he sing? Just like Britney Spears. That girl is crazy.

Speaker 3: 15:50

Yes, yes, crazy and fuck you.

Speaker 2: 15:53

Yeah, that's a good track um, actually one of my particular favorites of silo is, uh, bright lights, big city, give that one a listen. That's worth a.

Speaker 3: 16:00

That's definitely worth a listen I've seen him on um when daryl hall and hall had his. Uh correct, yeah, daryl's house he did a good show.

Speaker 2: 16:08

He did a really good episode there, great hall and oats renditions.

Speaker 3: 16:11

He really really did anyways oh, here's, here's max martin, yeah yeah, yeah, it's like uh tame and paul a little bit they're probably ripping this guy off. He probably drives like a little chevy.

Speaker 2: 16:21

He has like a nice little apartment I got a feeling this guy learned his. This guy didn't even need to learn his lesson, he was just, quite simply, every time something was sold, I'm getting a nickel or a dime, or every time either way, everything was coming up, pearlman, until allegations of sexual impropriety began to arise. All of the boys in all of pearlman's boy bands spent a great deal of time at pearlman's house at one point or another.

Speaker 2: 16:49

All of those boys in fact referred to him as big papa they love it when they call him big papa indeed one of the members of take five remembers sleeping over at his house with a few other boys and awoke to find pearlman at the foot of their bed wearing only a towel. Pearlman then did a swan, dive into the bed, began to wrestle with the boys and the towel came off. Oh no. Another instance included some of the boys arriving at Pearlman's house to go swimming, where Pearlman answered the door wearing nothing at all, claiming he'd just gotten out of the shower.

Speaker 2: 17:24

Yeah right Still. Another instance included a private screening of Star Wars at Pearlman's mansion, but the movie was cut short and replaced with a porno movie. That's awesome. There's a reason why.

Speaker 3: 17:35

How did that?

Speaker 2: 17:35

get there yeah how with a porno movie. That's awesome. There's a reason. Why did that get there? Yeah, how'd that happen? There's a reason why nick carter didn't participate in the backstreet boys lawsuit against lou. Consensus is that lou has naughty pictures of nick and nick couldn't risk the possibility of lou releasing them. None of the boys would, or ever will, admit anything deliberate ever happened to any of them. They're all too ashamed. Their lives would be ruined. But these were just allegations. No suits were ever filed.

Speaker 1: 18:01

Yeah, that's the thing with all this sexual harassment stuff or sexual. What am I trying to say?

Speaker 2: 18:07

Any kind of impropriety like that you don't want to bring that up and say, yeah man, I was playing touchy-feely with an old man.

Speaker 1: 18:12

Right, right. But also, it was all alleged and none of these guys will admit. They're like oh, nothing ever happened, Nothing ever went wrong.

Speaker 3: 18:21

Yeah, he was a little weird sometimes, but nothing. Yeah, I don't know what they're trying to get at with that. He just liked shower stuff.

Speaker 1: 18:29

The other thing is that a couple of the band members that did come out I guess the one guy was on Stern from LFO and he was telling stories about uh lou and like improper stuff that was going on but a lot of these other guys that are in like the bands, like in sync and the, and those bands say, oh, those guys are just bitter because they didn't have like the more successful band, make it as big as we did right.

Speaker 1: 18:51

So the successful bands were like they, even later on, as we'll find out, with with lou. Um, when things went down, they didn't really still didn't talk bad about them, right, you know. Which was makes you wonder.

Speaker 3: 19:03

But well, a lot of these men in this industry also. I think that they know how impressionable like they prey upon these boys and they know how easy it is to get their parents to just let somebody that's in charge of this band to here.

Speaker 1: 19:18

Let them stay over your house like a father figure.

Speaker 3: 19:20

Yeah let them. That's the same thing with the nickelodeon story that's out right now on netflix yeah, and a lot of these guys like he did.

Speaker 1: 19:27

He had all kind of like toy stuff you know what I mean like video games and like the house is just like.

Speaker 2: 19:32

Uh, like michael jackson, I was just gonna say like neverland.

Speaker 3: 19:34

Kind of reminds me of your basement somewhere. I know I got arcade games over there. I know what's going on here.

Speaker 1: 19:39

Candy did I always got Yoo-Hoo and Apple Juice in my fridge Right next to the Miller Lite. Yeah right.

Speaker 2: 19:45

All right. The boy band craze began to phase out in the early 2000s. Perlman, forever seeking additional streams of revenue to hit big, tried his hand in the filmmaking game, now at a cost of a little over $20 million. He made a movie named Longshot, which was released in 2002. Despite the cast, including the likes of Paul Sorvino, gilbert Gottfried, perlman's cousin Art Garfunkel, all members of NSYNC, britney Spears, kenny Rogers, dwayne the Rock Johnson and nearly every artist signed to his record label, the movie made approximately $2 million and currently holds a score of 2.6 on Rotten Tomatoes.

Speaker 3: 20:29

I've never heard of this movie.

Speaker 2: 20:31

No me neither. Neither did a lot of people. He spent 20 and he only made two. That's just an odd pairing of people too. He wanted to have this star studded cast to make this movie.

Speaker 1: 20:40

It's like a it was it's like cannonball run or we are the world or something.

Speaker 2: 20:43

Almost, but we are the world make money.

Speaker 3: 20:46

Well, they're all doing favors for him too with this movie. He probably didn't pay him shit.

Speaker 1: 20:49

Yeah, true.

Speaker 2: 20:59

Well settled. All of Pearlman's other acts either followed suit or fizzled out. In 2002, pearlman got into the talent scouting business by purchasing an outfit called Options Talent Group. Though moderately successful for Pearlman, the business itself was a mess Over the course of its life and a handful of name changes. Nearly 2,000 complaints had been filed by angered would-be actors, alleging they'd received little to no service for the exorbitant fees they had paid. In 2003, the business, by then known as Fashion Rock, filed bankruptcy.

Speaker 1: 21:30

Was that the one where he'd go up to people and be like hey, you know, you can be a star? We'll do your headshots and we'll do this and that, but you've got to pay for them, spend money to make money or whatever. You've got to get all this shit done, but it's going to lead to you being famous and all that.

Speaker 2: 21:43

I'm a big fan and will ever, always agree with you've got to spend money to make money, that's just the way it works and by spending money it's either your effort, one way or another you can make it.

Speaker 2: 21:54

This is just them taking these people money saying oh yeah, well, we've got an agent working on that, we've got an agent working on that, but make sure you pay your monthly retainer fee, make sure to retain this talent agency because we're working hard for you. And the complaints over the course of time was just simply look, I'm giving these guys money, I'm getting no phone calls, I'm getting nothing.

Speaker 3: 22:21

I'm not even getting denials right, I'm just getting nothing. At least get tell me that, tell me no, as opposed to just leaving me guessing.

Speaker 4: 22:24

They still run that racket today at the farm show they have like that barbizon, do you guys?

Speaker 3: 22:25

ever see that like yeah, and they say, okay, we'll take headshots like oh, your daughter has it or your son has that. Look like we're looking for people like that is that still a? Thing, yes, it was just at the farm show year. The talent scouts really are looking for that kind of look and they'll say, okay, well, you need so-and-so and they need to get some sort of shot Like we make videos now.

Speaker 3: 22:43

Like this whole thing of like making a video, of them dancing or like singing for like four minutes, like we have a whole list, but then you pay $75 for the video, then $100 for headshots, and it's still a thing. We should go, we should.

Speaker 2: 22:58

I'm serious, we should go. Look I'll buy. Let's go do that. I think that would be hilarious. Do you remember at the mall they used to have where you could make your own?

Speaker 3: 23:10

business cards At the mall. Oh shit, I remember that I did that in high school. Yeah, we did like head pimp yeah.

Speaker 1: 23:15

Where would you make it? It was like a machine. Yeah, oh, it was a business card machine.

Speaker 3: 23:19

Yeah, Like 10 business 10 business cards for like what? Three, 50 or five, five bucks or something.

Speaker 2: 23:23

Yeah, it was wonderful. It's not bad. It was a mobile printer. It was awesome.

Speaker 3: 23:30

That's pretty good yeah were great.

Speaker 1: 23:32

They're absolutely great. I have no recollection of that. I can neither confirm nor deny that ever happened.

Speaker 2: 23:37

It was a whole machine of yeah, business cards well now, in 2003, pearlman had yet to find sources of income as lucrative as airship international or his two greatest boy bands, backstreet boys and nsync. Try though he did at revisiting his recipe for creating the next biggest boy band, none of them worked out. Investors in Transcontinental Airlines and Transcontinental Airlines EISA plan continued to expect the dividends to which they'd become accustomed. Again, that's that 10% and 8% for this. Publicly, I'm sorry, this privately held company plus this EISA program that Venture had discovered doesn't exist, but kept his silence. Running out of liquidity, lou turned to the banks for loans. He collateralized nearly everything he owned, which, at this point, among other things, included his mansion in Florida, a few condominiums and three airplanes. He even collateralized the ongoing royalties he was receiving from the height of his boy band days. Most importantly, he collateralized his stake in Transcontinental Airlines.

Speaker 2: 24:45

Again, gentle reminder, transcontinental Airlines didn't exist. We learned this five years ago, back in 1998, when Bencher confronted Perlman about it and was inevitably paid off to keep his mouth shut. Transcontinental Airlines was a complete and total fabrication. It only existed on paper. So if Transcontinental Airlines didn't exist, does that mean that any sort of Transcontinental Airlines EISA plan didn't exist either? But the banks still provided liquidity using transcontinental airlines as collateral so there was backing for a non-existent company correct.

Speaker 1: 25:25

It's probably easy if you can fudge documents or or do whatever, if it's so, it's the.

Speaker 2: 25:31

To get loans of this nature, you you need what's called corroboration or third-party assurance, right, so you have an audit done by a third party. You have somebody looking at the books, third party. It's basically saying yes, we verify. What this guy says is true.

Speaker 1: 25:45

Everything's good to go much like barry minkow did what exactly like barry minkow. In fact, this guy is carbon copy of exactly what barry minkow had done pretty much yeah, because then he'd go out to it was like all insurance money and he would do, uh, like the sprinkler systems and stuff they would go off and ruin the building, but he would go out to like uh. These people would show up. He'd he'd take them out to uh. Now minka would do this take them to like uh.

Speaker 2: 26:10

They'd want to see a physical location, so he'd find one under under construction and just go in and he would, would just stop Like, while the construction guys are there, he'd give them all a couple of bucks and say, hey, look guys, I'm going to pretend like I'm the owner. Can you walk around Just?

Speaker 1: 26:20

walk around.

Speaker 2: 26:21

Or hell. I represent the owner and not even tell them anything, so they wouldn't have to be held liable.

Speaker 1: 26:26

Anyway, depending on how you carry yourself, like people just believe you and trust you. Pearlman was much like that. He was a smooth talker and kind of had that way about him and people would just go with what he said.

Speaker 2: 26:40

He's got a way about him. I don't know what it is. They wrote a song about that. Yes, well done. The demise in Pearlman's house of cards began its collapse in 2004, triggered by the estate of one of his biggest believers, dr Joseph Chow. State of one of his biggest believers, dr Joseph Chow. Remember Chatfield, dean and Company, that boiler room outfit who were hard-selling.

Speaker 2: 27:06

Airship International stock back in the early 90s, I do Well, dr Chow was one of their earliest victims. By now he'd come to know Lou personally, thanks in part to Lou introducing Dr Chow to the high life and wealth and fame and hanging around with the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC as a normal course of business. Dr Chow believed in Lou and he believed everything Lou told him. Over the course of a decade, the extent of his belief amounted to nearly $14 million in loans for anything Lou had to offer. Well, upon his death, the Chow family sought to be made whole for the loans. Initially, telling the Chows that times were tough for business, lou offered them 10 cents on the dollar. When that failed, he offered to pay down the loans at $100,000 per calendar quarter, which would have taken 35 years to pay in full. This too was deemed by the Chows to be unsatisfactory.

Speaker 3: 28:05

What they say to make whole. Just not how long yet.

Speaker 1: 28:08

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 28:10

Miraculously, Perlman soon after furnished forbearance letters for each loan Dr Chow had made to him. According to the brief content of each document, it afforded forgiveness of the loans if Lou wasn't able to pay. And lo and behold, each of them had been signed by Dr Chow himself. Well, not believing any of that, the Chow estate hired an attorney. That attorney did some digging. Any of that? The Chow estate hired an attorney. That attorney did some digging and, as it turns out, Lou had forged Dr Chow's signature on every single one of those forbearance letters. In fact, when I was talking about that third party corroboration, the accounting firm that had been preparing and signing Lou's tax returns and personal financial statements didn't exist, and personal financial statements didn't exist.

Speaker 2: 28:56

It never existed. For well over a decade, lou had been paying a secretarial service to park a woman at a desk at the non-existent firm's address to wait for calls, and when and if calls ever came in, they were forwarded to Lou, who would act as though he was a representative of the firm. It all began to crumble from there. That's genius.

Speaker 1: 29:17

That is genius, that's's so smart but that's the thing with these, with like these you you said he signed this guy.

Speaker 3: 29:22

It is like you're paying her what? Eight dollars an hour and you're making eight million. Yeah, just before now you could do that you could do with ai.

Speaker 2: 29:29

Now you know what I mean it scares the shit out of me with this ai stuff scares me just I sleepless.

Speaker 1: 29:35

But these documents that like that makes sense, then because this one that dr chow, he said he had him sign he would have been notarized right or like somebody would have been there wouldn't matter.

Speaker 2: 29:45

Wouldn't matter, wouldn't matter, lou would have faked the notary yeah right, this guy's just faking it everything again, I can't harken back enough on the concept of third-party corroboration. How much that matters when it comes to bank loans and bank this, that and the other thing, and insurance, and you name it yeah I mean you need some kind of somebody out there some professional service organization be it, you know, a cpa firm, tax preparer, you name it to put their, their name on the line and say, yeah, this is legit this is legit.

Speaker 2: 30:12

But lou said, fuck that, I'll just make up my own and sign it like I was them it's, it's not well, see this, this dr chow guy seems that he was into the boys also you know what I mean.

Speaker 3: 30:23

Hanging out, he's like hanging at these parties. Sure, with n sync and backstreet, he's probably a grown man yeah so you know lou sees this in him because he's like, oh hey, and as long as he's hanging out with them guys, he's just willing to fork out money.

Speaker 2: 30:35

And that's exactly it. He's seeing this high life and this wealth that well, if Lou can establish himself as this high and mighty guy with these boy bands who at the time or at least they had had a time where they were massive globally yes, whatever this guy does must be. He's got the Midas touch. I want to invest in this guy yeah, and I know like lou definitely put on that front.

Speaker 1: 30:57

He had like a rolls royce powder blue nice car, big, big house on the water like he was.

Speaker 3: 31:01

He looked the part. You trust people like that because you can see it right, you see the uh success.

Speaker 1: 31:07

But my whole thing is with this is like I mean the guy could have still made a lot of money just doing shit legit. Yeah, like that's what's amazing to me. Like that you just get so greedy and I guess it's never enough I don't know if it's the greed per se.

Speaker 2: 31:20

I think in lou's case he started one thing and then built something to pay that one thing and then built the next thing to pay this well, we'll definitely get to that yeah, wasn't that what?

Speaker 3: 31:30

um? Like bezos and those guys, they don't really have money. They just take out like billion upon billion dollar loans and they just use the loans that they take out to pay under the loans that they have, and it just goes in a circle, right?

Speaker 2: 31:41

So there's a kind of a way and I know I understand what you're saying, Matt, and that's absolutely a thing I mean you can do that with and I I've been talking with clients of mine and people I know about the about the concept of buying dividend paying whole life insurance, concept of buying dividend paying whole life insurance. So if you get into dividend paying whole life not universal, not variable or whatever the hell else kind of insurance there is it must be dividend paying whole life. You build cash value in that and as you build cash value in that, it's like putting cash value into a house. Let's say, later on you can collateralize that, that is to say, borrow against the value of that policy. Just's say, Later on you can collateralize that, that is to say, borrow against the value of that policy, just like you can get a second mortgage or whatever on your house and borrow against that.

Speaker 2: 32:24

So I'm a big fan of the whole life dividend paying, whole life because once you get into that and you build this over the course of decades, it creates, Matt, that idea of getting loans and whatever. I like to look at it as a basis for liquidity once you retire and by retire I mean stop working or decide to stop working or do something else in your golden years. It creates liquidity that you can now drip as a dripping loan off of this. You can either pay yourself back or not, it doesn't matter, because by the time you die, if you time it right, you can get this money back, plus the dividend that had been growing and compounding interest and all kinds of stuff that you can live quite sweetly. And when you die, well, your loan's outstanding or netted against whatever's in the policy, and the net of the two is what goes to your heirs. It's a funky dividends.

Speaker 1: 33:13

Yeah, I like that song Three times dope Three times dope.

Speaker 2: 33:17

All right, we are now in the later months of 2006. Investors in Transcontinental Airlines and Transcontinental's EISA program suddenly stopped receiving their monthly dividends. Now, it should be noted by now, if you haven't already guessed it. There is no such thing. First and foremost, there is no such thing as an EISA program. That is, an employee investment savings account, sounds legit, though. Well, there does, however, exist such a thing called an employer retirement investment savings account or an ERISA account, which is a legitimate, federally insured deferred compensation plan. Perlman's EISA investment offerings were nothing more than him exploiting and creating confusion between the two names. Like Transcontinental Airlines itself, no such thing as an EISA existed. So, dave, I wanted to say this because we had talked about this earlier, about the airline.

Speaker 1: 34:14

About the airline.

Speaker 2: 34:15

When he used the concept of Transcontinental Airlines. There's a, there's one trans world airlines or just continental airlines. When you, when he makes a portmanteau of the two, it sounds legitimate to people yeah, like they're the same what's that thing, mandela the? Mandela effect it's. It's just like the the mandela effect.

Speaker 3: 34:32

There's a lot of people running for office around here too. If you have a name like, if there's like a kennedy name or like uh, you know some dude.

Speaker 2: 34:39

It's like some kind of name that hits yeah, you go in and you just, eddie murphy. Yes, yes distinguished gentleman johnson, the name you know yeah oh yeah, let's vote for johnson yeah right, there was a.

Speaker 1: 34:49

Uh, there's a guy coming here to harrisburg to uh down there to h mac or whatever, and uh, his last name's crockett. He's a country singer. Well, he's a like great, great grandson of our great, however long back, I don't know, it's davy crockett, okay that name crockett.

Speaker 1: 35:06

Sure he's because of the name, like, I mean, he's actually pretty talented. I looked him up, I was like I would have went, probably checked out the show, but I'll be at the beach. But because of the name crockett, it's like oh yeah, I know that name, davy crockett and he's actually related to him. So that immediately gives you a little bit of like edge or credibility. You're like oh, I know that name. Yeah, sure, decent, you know.

Speaker 2: 35:27

I mean I mean that happens all the time. Look at, so you had john lennon, then his son, julian, right, you had. Well, I don't know. I guess it's different when I hear, like Goldie Hawn and her daughter, what's her name? Kate Hudson, kate.

Speaker 3: 35:38

Hudson.

Speaker 2: 35:39

I mean, I think that's just a happenstance, that they happen to be Like people didn't hear. I'm sorry, it's a terrible example, because people didn't hear the name Hawn when they saw her. Oh, drew Barrymore, her father was famous.

Speaker 1: 35:52

Yes, Her grandfather, it happens. Or you have somebody like Nick Cage, who changed his name from, wasn't it? Coppola? Yes, oh yeah, that's right. That's right, that's right.

Speaker 2: 36:02

You have George Clooney, Right Nephew of Rosemary Clooney. It's a popular name, Sure, she not only did bounty towel commercials, paper towel commercials she was huge back in the day in the 50s, even the 60s, with Bing Crosby. You name it White Christmas. She was a co-star of White Christmas, which happens to be Zab's favorite Christmas movie, by the way.

Speaker 1: 36:24

Yeah, bing Crosby, one of his son or I forget what movie we did, but one of his relatives was in a movie and I was thinking he never did anything else after that. Was he in RAD it? Might have been, it might have been, maybe it could have been.

Speaker 2: 36:37

All right. Well, let's see, let's see, let's see. No such thing as that, yeah, that's right. No such thing as an ESA existed. So Florida's Office of Financial Regulation stepped in to examine the slew of complaints received from Transcontinental's investors. A group of banks who'd made those collateralization loans had a judge force Transcontinental into bankruptcy. By the time the attorneys and auditors arrived at Transcontinental's doors, all employees had either quit or been fired, and Perlman had since fled the country and made his way to Germany. By mid-February 2007, perlman's house was raided and all of his assets were seized. A forensic investigation of his books and records revealed the full extent of Perlman's Ponzi. Over the course of 20 years, perlman had bilked banks out of $156 million in loans and had swindled investors out of well over $300 million.

Speaker 1: 37:40

That's insane.

Speaker 2: 37:41

That is insane. Now, to be clear, and just as a reminder, when I say something like all the employees were fired or they had quit, that is of the holding company Transcontinental, the holding company. We all know that the airline itself didn't exist, but the airline was just a wink-wink subsidiary on paper of the holding company. We all know that the airline itself didn't exist, but the airline was just a wink wink subsidiary on paper of the holding company. So the holding company again had everything from recording studios to the blimp business, to the Chippendales business, to you name it. So the whole thing, yeah.

Speaker 1: 38:08

So that 2007,. That would have been around the time then. So, buddy, you know a guy listening to the show, a friend of the show, snowman Sean. He lived in Orlando and I asked him about this, lou Pearlman, I said, hey, are you aware of this guy? He's like, oh yeah, I got a story about that. So around this time one of his good friends had a car window tinting business.

Speaker 2: 38:27

Not a blimping business, but a tinting business.

Speaker 1: 38:29

Yeah, tinting ain't easy but he did work for the lead singer of Creed. But he had he had did work for like the lead singer of Creed he did. Like his Ferrari, he would get some.

Speaker 3: 38:37

I think it was a Ferrari. High end clients.

Speaker 1: 38:40

Yeah, it was like a Ferrari or Lamborghini or like some car like that. So he would get some fancy cars in there, but a lot of these cars he would go to the actual house and do it at the house Like he could do it on. So Lou Pearlman's like a errand boy, like go get this done, get that done, sure.

Speaker 2: 38:55

He contacted Call it a personal assistant. Personal assistant, there you go.

Speaker 1: 38:58

Personal assistant.

Speaker 2: 38:59

Pool boy is also acceptable Pool boy.

Speaker 1: 39:02

He had him. He said, hey, I want to get this Rolls Royce tinted up and you know, check around. So they contacted Sean's buddy's company and he went out to the house and, sure enough, rolls Royce there, somehow he ended up at in the house, or at least in the foyer. He said there was like nearly a full size. It was either an x-wing fighter or a um millennium falcon like hanging in the foyer fucking falcon.

Speaker 1: 39:26

Yeah, and he remembers like, uh, he was like man, this guy, like he had all kinds of like cool star wars shit which we, you know they referenced early, like he had star wars the movie playing in there.

Speaker 2: 39:35

So toys for the boys. Yeah right, I got to believe it's an X-Wing fighter because a Lady of Falcons is too big.

Speaker 1: 39:40

It's too large.

Speaker 2: 39:42

It's a city block.

Speaker 1: 39:43

But I guess not shortly after. That is when all this stuff went down and he actually called back. He called this guy back, the manager or whatever and said hey. Our personal assistant said hey. Our personal assistant said hey, if you're going to auction off that stuff, I want first dibs on that X-Wing fighter, he said, because it was like a cool ass thing and figuring, if they're liquidating everything to pay everything back, you probably get it like pennies on the dollar.

Speaker 2: 40:07

You know what?

Speaker 1: 40:07

I mean, but I just thought that was like a cool story that he actually had dealings with this guy.

Speaker 3: 40:14

So where's this guy going to put x-wing?

Speaker 1: 40:15

I'm sure his house isn't that large too you know people just you find a way, yeah something like that if you're in your yard again.

Speaker 2: 40:22

That's a great example, matt. People buy these campers that they sit all year and they park them at their house, like instead of parking them in a lot someplace nope, let's just shit up the neighborhood and park them right in the driveway I saw.

Speaker 1: 40:33

saw one this guy bought a VHS vending machine. They had those, that's awesome. You would back in the eighties, you could go rent and it was a huge ass like a red box. Yeah, but it was massive and it had VHS tapes in it. This guy bought it for like eight grand and had it delivered.

Speaker 2: 40:52

He was like in his garage. It was just over here last weekend and I saw Ecto-1 parked down the street.

Speaker 1: 40:57

Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2: 40:58

My neighbor.

Speaker 3: 41:00

I mean that's something special. He has an Ecto-1. He's into Trans Ams.

Speaker 1: 41:03

Yeah, he's got some cool shit up there yeah.

Speaker 2: 41:07

All right. So by now Perlman was nowhere to be found, despite reported sightings in Germany, israel, belarus, russia, spain, panama and Brazil. He maintained the ability to dodge the authorities. It took a random German tourist at a Western resort in Bali to make the connection that the picture of a guy in an article he'd read while in Germany looked exactly like the guy staying at his hotel. On June 14, 2007, the tourist secretly snapped a photo of Perlman and sent it to a newspaper reporter residing in St Petersburg, florida. The photo almost immediately made its way to the FBI, who immediately coordinated with the us embassy in jakarta.

Speaker 1: 41:58

pearlman was arrested at the hotel the next day so 2007 was like probably a little flip phone picture, you think? Or I wonder if he actually took a picture in like polaroid. You know what I'm saying. I was thinking about like you think about now, like if I took a picture yeah, I can just on the slide and you can text text it. Back then, I mean 2007, doesn't seem like that long ago, but it was maybe a little bit more work, and I think they had the same technology pretty much I was trying to think you could, those flip phones, you could send pictures and stuff.

Speaker 3: 42:24

Absolutely you could. It looked like shit, yeah, but still that was enough to get it there, right?

Speaker 2: 42:31

I'm thinking of, uh, the closest example I think I can come to is national treasure with, of all people, nicholas cage we were just talking about.

Speaker 2: 42:39

So a part of that movie is where he snaps a picture of this wooden block, this wooden log that has these old indian, american, indian um writings, writings yeah, I keep wanting to say things like hieroglyphics that's the wrong word, but anyway has their writings on and he sends it off to his mom to do some kind of deciphering, whatever. So whenever that movie came out and I think it was in the O's they clearly had the technology then, so I would not be surprised if he somehow used his phone for it.

Speaker 1: 43:07

Like, sent it over that way or email or something.

Speaker 2: 43:09

yeah, but for damn sure phone, unless did they have the iphone back?

Speaker 1: 43:13

then I think iphone came out in 08. There you go, that's what I was thinking. It may be a blackberry, could be a blackberry, yeah sure that's true I guess they technology was there, though, in 07 to show, to make it easy. Yes, hell yeah, blimping ain't easy what a snitch dude.

Speaker 2: 43:29

I know right, what did you imagine being perlman like getting walked out in handcuffs, like looking back at the dude with the picture like Jesus, thanks, asshole.

Speaker 3: 43:37

Yeah, who is this guy?

Speaker 1: 43:39

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 43:40

Well, in less than a year after his arrest, Perlman was ultimately sentenced to 25 years in prison, having been charged with money laundering, conspiracy and falsifying a bankruptcy proceeding. Now, 25 years equals 300 months. In other words, his sentence was calculated to be one month of prison for every $1 million he'd bilked from investors and personal loans. Now, it should be noted that the judge had given him a chance to reduce his sentence by one month for every million dollars he'd be able to repay. So if he comes up with $300 million, he can get out of jail.

Speaker 1: 44:17

Yeah, if he could fight Jake Paul or something.

Speaker 2: 44:19

There you go. That's right, he'll figure it out. Well, perlman began serving his sentence in 2008, with a projected release date in 2033. Four years would later be removed from the sentence for good behavior. In 2016, perlman had open heart surgery to replace a bad heart valve. A few weeks later, on august 19th 2016, at the age of 62, lou died from cardiac arrest there was something too that I think his mother died or something insert.

Speaker 1: 44:52

He never wanted to go under the knife for anything and he resisted it like most of his life, like going into surgery or anything. Because of that, he was scared of it and then, sure enough, that's how he ended up dying from surgery. He had like a fear of it.

Speaker 3: 45:07

I don't think anybody's excited about it. No, no, but like like that was one. He would never yeah, he would never yeah.

Speaker 1: 45:16

If you lose a parent like that, you probably think like, oh well, that's what happens. Like you feel like maybe that's going to happen to you, or it was one of those deals where he just did not want to do it. Nobody wants to go into surgery, and I mean without a doubt, they don't.

Speaker 1: 45:26

no they don't Shit, I don't want to get my wisdom teeth out. I didn't go Cause you got to uh put under and I was like I'm, I don't want to do that. Well then, my wisdom teeth. I went going to the dentist and he was like they're getting impacted, they have to come, yeah. So I had them taken out at uh 28. Funny story, though, was I had my wisdom teeth out and I ended up with paresthesia. Did you ever hear that? No, it's like a numbing in your any part of your face. I guess you can have it anywhere, paresthesia, but it was like the middle of my chin underneath was like numb, and I couldn't, and it was because the roots grow so long. They go around all the nerves. When you rip them out, it causes damage if you wait too long.

Speaker 3: 46:11

There you go. It's a crazy story.

Speaker 1: 46:12

Well, the other part was I'm in there and he's like it's kind of rare, it doesn't usually happen. He said I had another guy in here about your age. Same thing. Here was my brother-in-law. He had done a year earlier. We're about the same age. He's maybe two years older than me. Same thing happened to him.

Speaker 2: 46:28

Cash me outside. How about?

Speaker 1: 46:29

that.

Speaker 2: 46:36

Right, it's amazing, no surgery is fun.

Speaker 3: 46:37

No, it's not. It's not something one looks forward to. Unless you're into constructive surgery. Yeah, those people are always in the hospital. There's that they love it.

Speaker 2: 46:43

I've seen so many shiny lips and weird foreheads and where lines used to be.

Speaker 3: 46:48

Which is weird too, and where we live in, you wouldn't think of it as a super rich part of. Pennsylvania but you still see these people, like with all these surgeries, you're like what do they do?

Speaker 2: 46:59

It's the, it's the image. Yeah, you're, certain people are surrounded anymore by social media and they are surrounded by the, the, the beautiful people and what these people might look like and they want to look like that?

Speaker 3: 47:10

No, there was a. There was a lady at a Sam's club the other day. I was there with my kid. We were walking around I don't know where. We had to go in there and get some chicken or something, but you could tell she just was freshly out of some sort of surgery. Like the Joker or something. Yeah, Clint's like, why does she smile weird like that? And I was like I just think she's-. Why so? Serious. Yeah, I just think she's looking like that oh.

Speaker 2: 47:31

I wanted to bring up so. Back in 2007, as part of the bankruptcy proceedings, all of Perlman's assets had been seized in hopes of liquidating them and paying off the investors and debtors. Now, in addition to his cars, planes, condominiums and his mansion were priceless works of art. Well, as it turns out, nearly all of those works of art were fakes, as were his company's profits, as were the companies themselves, as were the stories he told of looking out at the airport from his bedroom as a boy, when it was actually alan gross's bedroom, as was his whole life it was all made up.

Speaker 1: 48:09

It was all made up.

Speaker 3: 48:10

That is crazy so he lived a life, though like he, he still lived very well yeah he lived a fantastic life.

Speaker 1: 48:19

He did yeah it was just one of those things where he was just always one step ahead, every until the end.

Speaker 3: 48:24

I mean sans jumping into like the you know a bed full of boys with like a towel on you know some some weird stuff going on, yeah, but yeah that minus that part.

Speaker 2: 48:32

But maybe that was part of his good life.

Speaker 3: 48:33

Yeah, that was his good life, he, he was living his best.

Speaker 1: 48:35

Yeah, definitely a lot. That's a lot of money to move through your 300 million.

Speaker 3: 48:40

I mean, that's just insane Fun fact on this story we kept talking about Max Martin, the Swedish songwriter 470 plus songs written, 400, some songs produced. Produced yes, in 2019, that was the latest I could find. He was worth $260 million, not bad, so you figure how big Taylor Swift got lately. Some of the songs he might have wrote since 2019.

Speaker 2: 49:04

Fun fact, if you look up the 1989 album, he wrote or co-wrote every song.

Speaker 1: 49:10

That's crazy and he's probably getting residual on every stream.

Speaker 2: 49:15

And.

Speaker 3: 49:15

I thought that was Taylor Swift writing those.

Speaker 2: 49:17

That's mailbox money. Anytime that song is played, printed sold, he gets X.

Speaker 1: 49:23

That's like passive income. You're just. What he's done is Mailbox money. That's wonderful. It's the best kind of money.

Speaker 2: 49:29

The best money is found money, found money.

Speaker 1: 49:31

But back to what I was saying earlier, like for this guy you could have had a nice life like doing shit legit. He was obviously a good businessman in some respects. I just it always amazes me with these Not easy being greedy man.

Speaker 2: 49:43

He knew how to get it. He also knew how to spend it. And he knew his spending. Just that was his addiction. I think that's what really brought him down. He saw this lifestyle.

Speaker 1: 50:01

He wanted this lifestyle and he carried on with it and he spent it like he was, like it was his own and in reality it was not. Yeah, I mean I get it. I mean I see, I remember, uh, years ago I got a friend, matt knows the guy. Uh, nice guy, I like this guy a lot and he, I remember seeing him and he was like, hey, um, I was like, how's everything going? He's like good man, yeah, I'm getting ready to quit my job. And I'm like, oh, yeah, this is like we're in our late twenties. At the time he's like, yeah, I got my own business going on. I'm like, oh, that's pretty cool.

Speaker 3: 50:19

He's talking about the basement fiasco.

Speaker 1: 50:21

What's that?

Speaker 3: 50:23

Oh, another guy we knew, remember, he helped me with my basement. No, no, no, no, no, not that guy.

Speaker 1: 50:26

Dude never showed up, no, intrigued now and I'm like, well, what business? What are you doing? He's like, well, I could tell you more about it if you're. You know, maybe you I'm like, well, yeah, what's up? But you know, I know this guy, he's a good guy and uh, it was one of those like kind of like a pyramid scheme type thing. I didn't really know much about it at the time, so I was intrigued, like, yeah, I want to know more. So we went to this.

Speaker 1: 50:50

Uh, it was like a hotel oh god he was like yeah, yeah, you got to come out and check out this. There's some guys speaking there about time share.

Speaker 3: 50:57

No, it wasn't a time share.

Speaker 1: 50:58

It was like a multi mark level marketing or whatever. So I go to this thing and michelle went along. We go to it and this guy's up there giving a speech dressed to the nines and he's like looking the part and he's like you know, you could make x amount of money, you could retire early. You can do you that, you'll be your own business owner. And I'm like, shit, yeah, I can do this, it seems pretty easy, no problem. After the thing he's like, hey, if you guys anybody wants to come back to my house, we're going to. You know, have some drinks, talk more business stuff and whatever. And I'm like, yeah, because it's not far from our house. He gave me the address and I'm thinking, well, that's not a very nice area for a house. The guy looked the part like I'm expecting a mansion, the way he's talking about the income. We go to this dude's house. It's a shitty house. He has a little 13-inch TV.

Speaker 3: 51:47

Look at this lifestyle.

Speaker 1: 51:48

Not to say he could say oh well, I'm putting my money back into the business. I don't care about material things, but what you just put on in front of all us made it sound like you're living the most I'm. I'm expecting a house with a pool and and just like top of the line everything.

Speaker 2: 52:03

Yeah, if you're going to sell me on it, you should have rented a house just for me.

Speaker 1: 52:06

Yes, right, do like permanent would have done it the right way, perl, whatever. When people showed up like dang, this guy is is money. But in my uh, you know, at that point I was like yeah, this is bullshit. But it had me up till that point. I was kind of thinking.

Speaker 3: 52:21

But then if you don't mind saying like what area, what was the product or service? Like linglestown, was it in colonial? It was in harrisburg here.

Speaker 1: 52:27

Okay, but uh, I mean it was a nice. It was a nice house, but it was a nice house for somebody that works a regular nine to five, not somebody that just was up on a stage talking about right fancy cars vacations. I'm here, I'm there what did he drive?

Speaker 1: 52:40

I don't even know what kind of car, but the house said enough but yeah I can see where, um, you know, if you can fake it like if that guy he was and this guy that I'm talking about the friend of mine, eventually, you know, went through and ended up getting out, getting out of it. But but I even said to him like I don't know, this seems a little fishy. Sure, I had another friend down the road you know, approached me about. I said, dude, I'm gonna tell you right now.

Speaker 2: 53:04

This is kind of like don't go to that guy's house.

Speaker 1: 53:06

Right right, right right. But at any rate, what I was saying is is I can see where um you can basically fake it till you make it absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 53:14

Now, what what you mentioned? Dave, one part of it and you were, you were almost there. I wholeheartedly believe in the and it's the concept of the, the millionaire next door, where you don't know these, these people like they could be just saving it and saving it and saving it. They don't live the extravagant lifestyle, they just get by, they do whatever hell. I mean. There's stories I can go on and on and on with about people I know who uh or no, and no love who just lived in apartments together and just did whatever and sock that money away. Sock that money away. Then they bought something small. Then they turn that something small into something bigger than bigger, than bigger.

Speaker 2: 53:49

I'm saying relative to business, not necessarily you know their houses themselves, but they again, it's that millionaire next door you don't know, like the guy that's driving a toyota corolla. He could be a billionaire, right. What's his name? Uh, warren buffett. That guy stops for a cheeseburger every day and drives some piece of shit car and I think he has like a, it's like a 90, some mercedes there you go.

Speaker 2: 54:09

Yeah, it's like a 91 mercedes and he drives nothing ridiculous. It's nothing out of control, it's just that car.

Speaker 1: 54:16

I think the smart thing too, and I think about this all the time if I came into like a lot of money, you almost want flashy cars and you become a target. Then A friend of mine has a really nice Porsche. Now he's since got rid of it, but he drove that down the one day. They went down to like the mall, down in Potomac Mills, I think was, or somewhere, and he was telling I never think about this. He's like, yeah, we want to go on a nice day trip. He's driving this porsche. And then he's like where do I park? Because now everybody's looking at the car and you got to worry the whole time like is somebody going to steal my car?

Speaker 1: 54:46

so I'm going to try a jackass or whatever, versus if you're driving in like a, you know, like a normal car nobody knows chevy toyota honda right now down in florida, in these places where it is, you know, I'm sure it's like they're dying a dozen bentley's and whatever else, but I don't know.

Speaker 3: 55:01

I think you can be a target too, like having all that money absolutely a lot of people look at cars as a status symbol and it just gets you from point a to point b but then they go, they, they pull up to their home, which you're like, okay, they're driving that yeah that car and they have that house right true you're like that don't make sense.

Speaker 1: 55:18

Yeah, you don't want to have like a lamborghini and live in a row home. You know, I'm saying, hey guys, can you?

Speaker 2: 55:24

wrap it up. There she is again now that one I will take I will take it. Thank you, mrs dave.

Speaker 1: 55:30

We we finally got it out yeah, that was a cool story, zav. I enjoy that. I like the white collar crimes. Sure very similar, though a lot of them, yeah, very like, it's always the same uh, peak, and then you know they usually always get caught. We haven't had one yet where it's like then we wouldn't have anything to talk about.

Speaker 3: 55:46

It would be no crime, I guess.

Speaker 2: 55:48

Yeah, that's right, there'd be nothing to talk about no you're right, we would probably never end one of these with. The crime is still going on it's ongoing.

Speaker 3: 55:56

They're still looking at it.

Speaker 1: 55:59

Because even the crypto guy was more current, but he hadn't, you know. Oh yeah, he had just went down. I think when we had recorded that.

Speaker 3: 56:07

But these schemes to me still seem incredible. Just the smarts that these guys have to even attempt something like this, knowing that, hey, this this whole thing could fold. Dude, the likelihood is not good yeah, but even when the things crumbled on him, he still found a way out. He still had enough, you know, money somewhere to get, to get rid of it. It goes away, but then there's more stuff compounded dude this guy was getting.

Speaker 2: 56:32

This guy was still getting bank loans when investigators were chasing him down. He was still able to close. I think the last bank loan he had gotten was through some bank in Indiana that had closed, just as, again, people are getting on him and chasing him down. In fact, he was almost caught at one point when he was wire transferring money from the proceeds of the loan to his own personal account. And they found out where he was wire transferring money from the proceeds of the loan to his own personal account, and they found out where he was. And again it's like all right, well, I'm going to wire the money from bank of, let's say, indiana to to Lou Pearlman, personal. Okay, but that wire they know. They know where the origination of that. So, or the destination, I should say so this guy maybe at the time was either in Germany or Belarus or you name it. By the time the authorities got there to find him, he had already skipped down jeez.

Speaker 3: 57:17

The moral is, I guess if you're going to commit any kind of crime today, don't get caught. Well, you're going to get caught.

Speaker 1: 57:22

I think is where we're going oh yeah, pretty much I don't think there's any way out of it like once you're in it, you're in it yeah, even if you die before you get caught, it's going to come out eventually, and then your whole names ran through the mud and everything else. But that EISA got me to thinking. Also very important message Don't forget your EITCs. Yeah, it's very important for private school education. It's a good thing. That's how they can get a lot of money for schools, If you're a business owner right Zab, you know a little bit about that.

Speaker 2: 57:48

That's right. So what Dave's referring to are tax credits. So what these are is, instead of paying your state or Commonwealth income tax, you can instead tell them that you're giving that money and doting it to your local Catholic school.

Speaker 1: 58:01

But, yes, I've enjoyed that one. We'll be back next week with a vintage cinema review. I think we got Bill and Ted's coming up. Ooh, excellent, excellent adventures. So, yeah, check that out. And then don't forget to find us on Facebook and Instagram at Old Dirty Basement, on TikTok, at Old Dirty Basement Podcast. You guys got anything else?

Speaker 2: 58:17

Nothing other than remember everybody. That's O-L apostrophe Dirty.

Speaker 3: 58:21

Basement.

Speaker 1: 58:21

That's right.

Speaker 3: 58:21

Yeah, no old, just old.

Speaker 1: 58:23

Old Dirty Basement.

Speaker 3: 58:24

That's right.

Speaker 1: 58:26

And I guess that's it for now. So we'll catch you where.

Speaker 2: 58:28

On the flip side If we don't see you sooner. Peace.

Speaker 3: 58:34

Thanks for hanging out in the old dirty basement. If you dig our theme music, like we do check out the Tsunami Experiment, find them on Facebook their music is available streaming on Spotify and Apple.

Speaker 1: 58:48

And where great music is available, you can find us at Old Dirty Basement on Facebook and Instagram and at Old Dirty Basement Podcast on TikTok Peace. We outie 5,000.